The Team That Dared To Do: Tottenham Hotspur 1994/95

By Chris Slegg and Gerry Francis

Football isn't about winning trophies, it's about the unforgettable moments that create the stories handed down through generations. Never has that been truer than at Tottenham in 1994/95. In The Team That Dared To Do, manager Gerry Francis reveals, for the first time, the diary entries he made in the months after being forced out of QPR and taking on one of the toughest jobs in English football at White Hart Lane. With outspoken chairman Alan Sugar fighting a points deduction and FA Cup ban in the courts, Francis replaced the sacked Ossie Ardiles. In a series of exclusive interviews conducted by BBC sports journalist Chris Slegg, we hear from former players, including JÜrgen Klinsmann, Teddy Sheringham, Darren Anderton, and Sol Campbell, about what life was like in the dressing room and on the training ground. From the magic of Klinsmania and Ardiles' audacious attempt to make a success of his "Famous Five" forward line, to some magnificent performances under Francis, it was a season that had it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Dec 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781785313561

Book preview

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PART ONE

June–November 1994

KLINSMANIA

1

Famous Five

‘That’s part of being a Spurs fan, seeing players who lift you off your seat and excite you.’ (David Howells)

IF it wasn’t for the handshake which lends it an air of formality, it could be a holiday snap. Clear blue sky to the top left of frame, shimmering blue water to the bottom. In the centre and mid-distance, a yacht and its sail drawing the eye to the hotel-clustered coastline beyond.

In the foreground two figures, both relaxed, smiling and squinting into the sun. One of them just happens to be a celebrated English football club chairman; the other, one of the most famous players in the world. Alan Sugar with his unmistakable curly black-grey hair and beard, attired in a light blue, loose-fitting shirt; right arm outstretched, hand clasped by Jürgen Klinsmann, maroon polo shirt, sunglasses clipped through lowest button hole, blond hair glistening.

Until now Sugar hasn’t had much to be cheery about this summer. On 14 June the Football Association fined Spurs £600,000, banned them from the 1994/95 FA Cup and docked them 12 points for the upcoming season after finding the club guilty of financial irregularities committed under former owners. Three weeks later, on appeal, the points deduction was halved, the fine was doubled and the FA Cup ban remained. Tottenham’s misdemeanour had been to pay undisclosed loans to players as a way of encouraging them to sign for the club in the late 80s and early 90s.

Under current manager Ossie Ardiles, Tottenham had stayed up by just three points the previous season. Now they were starting on minus six. Sugar vowed to fight the punishment and, in what almost appeared a personal act of defiance, went out and signed Klinsmann. The photo of the two beside Sugar’s yacht is a defining image both in the history of Tottenham Hotspur and of English football. ‘KLINSMANN COUP’ ran the headline in the Daily Express on 30 July 1994. ‘The brilliant blond striker, 30 today, joined Spurs from Monaco in a £2m deal secretly secured on chairman Alan Sugar’s yacht in Monte Carlo.’

Big money, big name signings don’t happen like this any more. The expression ‘transfer saga’ has become a cliché, but that’s so often what they are: long and drawn-out, as top players are linked with top clubs over the final year or two of their existing contract before the move finally happens. Klinsmann to Tottenham hadn’t even been mentioned in the gossip columns. It had come out of nowhere. Until that picture of the two men standing by Sugar’s yacht appeared in the papers few would have considered such a transfer remotely possible.

Before the photo was taken, Sugar met with Klinsmann’s agent Andy Gross and his manager at Monaco – a certain Arsène Wenger. Monaco agreed to the £2m fee and, according to Sugar, in his 2010 autobiography What You See Is What You Get, Klinsmann accepted that Spurs couldn’t go beyond their maximum salary of £8,000 per week. Sugar says that Gross then insisted that because of the problems Tottenham were having with the FA and the possibility of relegation, the two-year contract would have to include a get-out clause at the end of the first year. The Spurs chairman claims that his reading of the demand made by Gross was that it was a get-out clause only in the event of relegation. In his excitement and eagerness to conclude the deal, Sugar agreed to it.

The Spurs supremo was keen to make public the news of the transfer as soon as possible. He says he did so partly out of fear that the deal could yet be scuppered. Although he had an agreement with Monaco and Klinsmann he didn’t yet have a legally-binding contract signed. His tactic, he says, was to get a photo of the Klinsmann handshake in the papers so that the player wouldn’t then dare back out. Sugar had many contacts at Sky and telephoned them, instructing them to send a film crew to his yacht.

Today Klinsmann lives in California where he served as USA head coach between July 2011 and November 2016, leading the country to one Gold Cup triumph (the equivalent of the European Championship for the Americas and Caribbean region) in 2013. Speaking to me over the phone, he reveals his experiences at Spurs left a great impression on him. ‘I had no idea what to expect in London,’ says Klinsmann. ‘Okay, so I knew that the English and German cultures looked at each other in a certain way, and I knew that there were some chants that I had heard, but I had no issue with that. Other than that it was all going to be a complete adventure, on and off the pitch. As soon as my wife and I arrived in London, we knew that it was the place for us. It was such a cosmopolitan city, such a diverse place. It is a city where anyone can be themselves. It has its own feel to it. People from all over the world come to live there together and have no problem. Most people are very open-minded. You can just glide into your own lifestyle and enjoy it. There is so much going on culturally.’ So how did Sugar persuade him to sign? ‘Well, we had a really excellent cappuccino on his yacht,’ jokes Klinsmann. ‘It was true Italian. Other than that, he was very honest about the situation the club was in, and I thought it would be a real challenge with the six-point deduction to try and help the club.’

Today Nick Hewer is known to millions as a man who for years appeared as one of Sugar’s sidekicks on the BBC television programme The Apprentice. His frequently-raised eyebrows, straight talking and acerbic wit have made him a popular figure with many viewers. In the 80s and 90s he was Sugar’s main PR man at Amstrad and then Tottenham. ‘Sugar has a great marketing eye,’ says Hewer. ‘He knows what he’s doing. He knows how to create a buzz. He knows how to be different. It’s marketing genius really. To bring in Klinsmann? Bloody hell, he knew that would be a phenomenal thing. In fact he rang Ossie from his boat and said, If I can get Klinsmann what would you say? Ossie said, He wouldn’t want to come to us.

‘But if I could get him, what would you say?

‘I’d say, fantastic.

‘Good, cos I’ve just signed him.

‘He didn’t even consult Ossie in fact. He knew that to bring Klinsmann into the team would just transform people’s perceptions of the club, and it did.’

Daniel Wynne has been a Tottenham season-ticket holder since just before his fifth birthday in 1975. Today he is the club’s in-house match commentator. Speaking as a fan, he says: ‘There was no build-up to the signing. It was a complete surprise. They were different times. That couldn’t happen now. I was sitting at work when I heard Klinsmann had signed for Tottenham. The first thing that came to mind was the newspaper headline in 1978 when we signed Ardiles and Ricky Villa: SPURS SCOOP THE WORLD. That’s what it felt like again.’

While Oleg Salenko of Russia and Hristo Stoichkov of Bulgaria had shared the Golden Boot at USA 94 with six goals each, Klinsmann had been the true star striker of the World Cup. Germany had been surprisingly beaten by Stoichkov’s Bulgaria in the quarter-finals, but Klinsmann had lit up the tournament with five goals, all of them of the highest quality. A World Cup winner with West Germany in 1990, Klinsmann had spent the last five years playing for two of Europe’s richest and most glamorous clubs. First, Internazionale of Italy, with whom he won the UEFA Cup in 1991, then on to Monaco where he made it to the Champions League semi-finals in 1994.

Now he was coming to Tottenham, reduced, since the turn of the decade, to the role of a mid-ranking team at the best of times and now seriously in the doldrums, having been hit by the damning FA sanctions. In the summer of 1994, Klinsmann had his pick of clubs. However, you look at that photo more closely today and you notice that Klinsmann is pulling Sugar’s arm towards him, perhaps desperate to seize the opportunity he’s been offered.

Bigger clubs in Europe had been chasing his signature, but the only two English clubs firmly linked with him were Aston Villa and Everton, both on a par with Tottenham in terms of profile, and both having won the game’s biggest prizes far more recently than Spurs. Villa had been champions in 1981 and European Cup winners the following year. Everton had won two league titles, one FA Cup and the Cup-Winners’ Cup in the 1980s. Who knows what else they might have achieved in Europe, but for the ban on English clubs after the Heysel disaster in 1985? The most recent of Tottenham’s two league titles had of course been achieved way back in 1961, although the 60s, 70s and 80s had been littered with cup successes.

Two factors might have put off other English suitors. Firstly, Klinsmann’s age. Secondly, his reputation. If there had been magic in his performances at USA 94, there had been menace four years previously at Italia 90. West Germany had won perhaps the ugliest World Cup tournament of all time – beating Argentina 1-0 in a final in which their opponents had two men sent off.

In 1990 the tactics employed by defenders could be brutal. Argentina themselves had been the victims of some roughhouse play from Cameroon in the opening game; the West African side were also reduced to nine men, but still caused a huge shock with a 1-0 win over the defending champions. As such, the forwards had to resort to sometimes devious means. Klinsmann had become infamous as the greatest exponent of the dive. His antics, and those of others, in a World Cup full of cheating, simulation and dangerous tackling, coincided with England’s best-ever World Cup showing on foreign soil.

In the semi-finals England met West Germany. The Germans prevailed on penalties after a thrilling match. Andreas Brehme’s free kick took a huge deflection off Paul Parker, and looped over goalkeeper Peter Shilton to give West Germany an early second-half lead. Gary Lineker equalised with an unerring shot nine minutes from time. In extra time both teams hit the post, and of course Paul Gascoigne’s World Cup fell apart when he received his second booking of the tournament for a foul on Thomas Berthold. The ‘Tears in Turin’ rolled down Gazza’s cheeks as he realised he would be banned from the final. His friend and Spurs team-mate Lineker turned to manager Bobby Robson to warn him to ‘have a word’ with the England maestro, who was now an emotional wreck. The match finished 1-1, and then England had their first experience of their now all-too-familiar penalty shoot-out pain as Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle missed while West Germany scored all theirs. In the eyes of England fans, the emotion of the occasion and their team’s defiance in the face of adversity meant they were the moral victors, and that merely served to enhance the image of Klinsmann and his team-mates as pantomime villains.

Four years on, Klinsmann had now arrived in England with a sullied reputation to restore. Klinsmann was the second high-profile arrival at Spurs in as many days. Ilie Dumitrescu had also shone at USA 94, with some eye-catching displays in midfield as he helped guide Romania to the quarter-finals. In the round of 16 he scored twice in a 3-2 win over Argentina, one of the most entertaining games in World Cup history. The signing of 25-year-old Dumitrescu was in itself big news, but the capture of Klinsmann took things to another level. If Spurs fans were ecstatic, how did the players feel?

Darren Anderton was 22 then. He’d joined for the same £2m fee as Klinsmann two years previously, a hefty sum at the start of the 90s. In Anderton, Spurs were signing raw potential, in Klinsmann, proven quality. More than two decades on, Anderton has agreed to meet at The Grove in Hertfordshire to discuss his memories of 1994/95. Set in a stunning 300-acre country estate, the hotel which describes itself as ‘more than five star’ has often been used by the England team. The 18-hole golf course is popular with current and former footballers. Over a pot of tea in the restaurant off the main lobby, Anderton recalls the whirlwind summer of 1994 and the season that followed as clearly as if it was yesterday. He can remember the sequence of games and major events as accurately as most passionate supporters. For Anderton, who was about to start his third season in a Spurs shirt, the first feeling was one of shock that one of his new team-mates would be a former World Cup winner.

‘I was out in America watching the World Cup with friends when I found out we’d signed him. It was almost unbelievable. I saw that picture of him on the boat, and I thought it was a wind-up,’ says Anderton. ‘Speaking to the boys we were all saying, Surely not? and How good are we going to be this year?

‘We’d had a really terrible season the year before. Teddy [Sheringham] had been out injured. It had been Ossie’s first year and it had been a nightmare as we only just stayed up. Then all of a sudden – fair play to the chairman – he’d gone out and done this, he’d seen what was going on at the World Cup and sprung into action to sign the best players.’

Anderton’s former team-mate Sheringham, who is also happy to reminisce about 1994/95 in a separate interview, agrees. ‘I felt we already had the basis of a good side there at Spurs, but to give us that little bit extra, a real top quality player, someone who could do something special in the blink of an eye, that made a real difference. Bringing in Jürgen was a masterstoke,’ he says.

Football transfer deals have to be seismic to make the network news. The fee either needs to be astronomical – which this wasn’t – or the player has to be a household name. Jürgen Klinsmann – thanks to his brilliance at USA 94 and his histrionics at Italia 90 – was exactly that. Sure enough, Klinsmann’s arrival at Spurs featured on the BBC One O’clock and Six O’clock News. Over pictures of Klinsmann in action for Germany against Bolivia at USA 94, newsreader Jennie Bond told the afternoon audience: ‘Tottenham Hotspur have signed the German striker Jürgen Klinsmann for a transfer fee of £2m. Klinsmann, who’s 30, was Germany’s leading scorer at the last World Cup. He’ll join Spurs on a two-year contract from the French League club Monaco.’ Her colleague Martyn Lewis then introduced the next item, which was that the date had been confirmed for the first UK National Lottery draw – 19 November 1994. Spurs fans, though, felt as if they’d already hit the jackpot.

With this signing, Tottenham had positioned themselves at the centre of the football universe. Everyone wanted a piece of them. In the Premier League era, perhaps only Newcastle’s failed title challenge in 1995/96 and Leicester’s fairy-tale triumph in 2015/16 have garnered a greater level of interest from the football neutral and the wider public.

In the summer of 1994, midfielder David Howells was about to start his tenth season at Spurs. As one of Tottenham’s longest-serving players at the time, he had played alongside greats including Gary Lineker and Paul Gascoigne as well as Ossie Ardiles and Steve Perryman, who were now his manager and assistant manager respectively. Like Anderton, Howells can also remember his feelings when he learnt of Klinsmann’s arrival: ‘I was at White Hart Lane when I heard the news. I was just leaving the ground and it was on the radio. It was one of those that you’re not sure whether to believe straight away, even as a player. What made it better was that the newspapers were almost ridiculing Spurs at the time.

‘There were rumours of signing maybe Ruud Gullit; big names like that were coming up and it was always Oh, Spurs are after that one again. It’s folly, it’s not gonna happen. And then we got Klinsmann. Wow. Dumitrescu was a real coup anyway cos he’d had a great World Cup, so that whetted everyone’s appetite, but then to pull off the Klinsmann one, to get home and actually see it on the news with Sugar on the yacht with Klinsmann in Monaco, was barely believable.

‘The players were so excited. Signings at any level give you a buzz because you want to know what the individual is like, but when it’s someone as well-known as a Klinsmann, when you sign a Klinsmann and you know what a great player he is, you know he’s only going to improve you. You then start to think about what he will be like as a person and what else he will bring to the set-up aside from his undoubted quality on the pitch.’

London is perhaps the most beautifully strange football city in the world, certainly in Europe. Big cities tend to have big clubs bearing their names. Barcelona. Roma. Paris St Germain. Bayern and 1860 Munich. Real and Atletico Madrid. But there is no London United. No London City. No London anything. It is a capital city with no combined football identity, but instead a myriad of colours, of chants, songs, and superstitions: a football frenzy of rituals, histories and traditions. Pitches that are patches of green in a concrete jungle. Chelsea, Brentford, Fulham, Millwall. Splendidly simple place-names with no need of a suffix. Then there are names which carry a certain mystique: Queens Park Rangers, Crystal Palace, Leyton Orient and – surely the finest football name of them all – Tottenham Hotspur.

Klinsmann wasn’t just Tottenham’s first true superstar player since the departure of Paul Gascoigne, but London’s too. Gazza’s final Spurs appearance had been the 1991 FA Cup Final, when his self-inflicted injury saw him stretchered off and sidelined for a year before completing his £5.5m move to Lazio in Italy’s Serie A. In the meantime Spurs had become functional, Chelsea were a mid-table team and even though Arsenal were still winning trophies, (adding the FA Cup and League Cup in 1993 and the Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1994 to the league titles of 1989 and 1991), they now played ultra-defensive football under George Graham. Where Manchester had Eric Cantona, London football needed something, someone, to love.

The arrival of Klinsmann was that aphrodisiac. It sent white and blue blood coursing through the veins again. Tottenham was perfect for Klinsmann; Klinsmann was perfect for Tottenham. The cockerel could crow again. Every blade of the White Hart Lane turf appeared touched by magic. Every square inch bounded by those white lines seemed to awaken to infinite possibility.

There has never been a pre-season at Tottenham, or perhaps at any club, like the one in 1994. Klinsmann was ready for a hostile reception at the press conference to announce his arrival. Since the news of his signing had broken, television viewers in England had seen endless replays of what many considered to be an outrageous dive in the 1990 World Cup Final. The challenge by Argentina’s Pedro Monzon was quite clearly a foul, and one for which he was rightly shown a straight red card, becoming the first player to be sent off in a World Cup Final. It was also a foul which is quite clearly strong enough to knock Klinsmann off his feet. It was the way in which he fell, though, that Klinsmann has long been derided for. If you watch a slow motion replay there are four distinct stages to it. A fraction of a second after becoming airborne, Klinsmann twists the whole of his body, as if to add emphasis to the fact he’s been impeded. Then he hits the turf almost vertically – not quite head first, but shoulders first – as he holds his head in his hands and then propels himself straight back upwards as though he’s detonated a landmine on impact. Then come two sideways rolls to his left before he settles face down and motionless. The referee sprints across to Monzon to show him the red card, then beckons for the stretcher. There’s little doubting the histrionics of Klinsmann’s tumble.

His other most replayed fall occurred in the 1994 Champions League semi-final, when Monaco were beaten by Milan in one of the last games Klinsmann played for Wenger’s side. Milan defender Alessandro Costacurta appeared to make minimal contact, sending Klinsmann into a series of sideways rolls along the turf. Costacurta received a second yellow card, was sent off and banned from the Champions League Final.

On arrival in England, there was also another barrier for Klinsmann to overcome: xenophobia. It may have been half a century since the countries were at war, but England’s mainstream media was seemingly incapable of passing comment on a match against Germany or a German player without reference to the conflict. It was perhaps only the outrage caused by the Daily Mirror’s ridiculous ‘ACHTUNG! SURRENDER’ headline, when previewing the Euro 96 semi-final, that forced a greater awareness of just how distasteful this was. Their front page included mocked-up pictures of Stuart Pearce and Gazza wearing tin hats and warned: ‘For you Fritz, ze European Championship is over’.

The day after Klinsmann’s transfer to Spurs was confirmed, one newspaper ran the headline ‘DIVE BOMBER’. The war reference was unnecessary, though the copy itself was compelling: a warning to Klinsmann from one of England’s most prominent referees, Keith Hackett, who had just retired. ‘The message to Klinsmann must be that it will not be stood for here. He’ll be playing with the world’s best referees and won’t get away with any nonsense. Nobody can fail to be aware of the reputation Klinsmann has got for himself.’ England and Manchester United defender Paul Parker had been sought out for quotes too. He was still scarred by the experience of marking Klinsmann in the 1990 World Cup semi-final. ‘Normal precautions are no use against Klinsmann,’ he warned. ‘You simply cannot mark him tight as you would do most attackers. And the closer he gets to the penalty box, the more he is ready for one of his tricks. Go in hard on him at your peril. I reckon the new laws on tackling from behind were absolutely made to measure for Klinsmann.’

Klinsmann knew exactly what to expect at his first press conference, which took place on Thursday 4 August. Flanked by Ardiles and Sugar, who had interrupted his family holiday to be there, Klinsmann surprised everyone: ‘Maybe I can ask you the first question,’ he said, beating the journalists to it. ‘Are there any diving schools in London?’ There was laughter throughout the room. When it died down Klinsmann continued: ‘It is no problem. I just laugh about it. If people are serious, then maybe we can discuss it over a couple of beers and they can show me tapes of it – because I don’t remember the incidents. Perhaps the fans will try to provoke me, but I will just try to play good football.’

Klinsmann had struck the first blow. His self-deprecating sense of humour had the press onside straight away. Gary Mabbutt – Tottenham’s captain at the time – says Klinsmann had initially intended to take the joke even further: ‘When Jürgen arrived he was frustrated that one newspaper did a big spread titled: How to do the Klinsmann dive. I was sharing a room with Jürgen and he said, Listen, this is not true, I have never dived, I have never cheated, I have never done it on purpose in my life. He was really upset at how the British media portrayed him. Basically we agreed he had to laugh at himself, he had to find a way of turning it around.’ Mabbutt chuckles at the memory of what they came up with. ‘There was a thought that for the first press conference we could try to hire one of those old-fashioned massive diving suits with the massive masks, the big head, and Jürgen could walk in with this big metal suit on. We looked into it but you couldn’t hire one anywhere, it was impossible.’

‘I quickly learnt in England that you have to laugh at yourself,’ says Klinsmann. ‘The dressing room was full of jokers, they all made me laugh. Two people who were especially funny were Teddy Sheringham and Colin Calderwood. It was a different experience from in Germany, Italy or France. I realised that you can’t afford to take yourself too seriously. You can’t be offended. Teddy and Colin were always ready to hit you with something, but they expected you to hit them straight back. What that kind of humour means, is that you accept people for who they are. You give as good as you get. That was a wonderful experience for me. You respect people on the field and off it. The tricky thing with Colin was that it took me half a year to get to know his Scottish dialect, so for a while I really didn’t know what he was saying. Playing with characters like that though made my Tottenham career really entertaining.’

Two days after that press conference it was Klinsmann’s debut. Watford v Tottenham remains probably the most-hyped friendly Spurs have ever played. The match had been arranged as part of the deal which saw Steve Perryman leave Vicarage Road in 1993 to become assistant manager to Ardiles. Watford would have been pleased enough to secure the high-profile friendly even then, but now – with Klinsmann in town – the gate would be more than doubled. ‘JOIN SPURS AND SEE THE A406’ was the headline in the Evening Standard. Their reporter Mick Dennis asked whether Klinsmann, ‘a fine footballer, a civilised person, and very much a man of the world’ would be ‘prepared for the horrible reality of a wet Wednesday on the A406?’

On the day of the match local traders showed the kind of entrepreneurial spirit a modern-day Lord Sugar would seek in an apprentice. En route to the ground, in the shopping precinct a little way down Vicarage Road, you could buy a Klinsmann T-shirt for £9.99, or two for £15. Watford had been expecting a crowd of around 6,000 prior to Klinsmann’s signing. Press reports note that 4,000 were waiting outside Vicarage Road two hours before kick-off. The crowd in the end was a capacity 14,000 – a late surge forcing ground staff to take the decision at 2.45pm to push the kick-off back by 15 minutes to 3.15pm. No fewer than eight television camera crews were in attendance.

Stuart Nethercott, one of Tottenham’s first-choice centre-backs at the start of 1994/95, remembers the frenzy well. ‘You felt the buzz,’ he says. ‘I think the feeling among a lot of the supporters – because of the FA punishment – was that everyone was against us. The feeling was, Right, let’s stick together. It fostered a camaraderie. It was all backs against the wall.’

Darren Anderton agrees: ‘From the moment Jürgen arrived you felt something special was going to happen – even in the pre-season games. Watford away, I’ll never forget it. Thousands of fans there, kick-off delayed, the news crews everywhere. Trying to get off the pitch after the warm-up to get to the changing room and get ready for the game took forever, because hundreds of people were waiting to get his autograph. It was madness and it was great to be a part of.’

The pre-season interest in Spurs also made an impression on Howells: ‘It was just a carnival,’ he says. ‘I played in all the pre-season games. I was captain for a few as well. Spurs fans were desperate to get in at Watford. There were thousands of people outside, who were struggling to get in for a pre-season friendly which three or four weeks earlier would have been a total non-event. All of a sudden it was a massive news event as well as a sports event. It was handy for me too having Jürgen there, because funnily enough I was due to head straight to Heathrow after the Watford game to fly out to Berlin to stay with friends there for a couple of nights. I was speaking with Jürgen about what to do when I was there, and it was great to have some inside info from him. He really looked after me. He was such a great bloke and everyone got to know him really well. He was so approachable, just a decent, decent man.’

Saturday 6 August, 1994

Pre-season Friendly

Watford 1-1 Tottenham Hotspur

Johnson 35

Sheringham 65

A furry creature, either a stoat or a ferret – the various sports hacks come to different conclusions – scuttles across the pitch before kick-off and has to be chased away by Watford’s mascot. It seems every living being in Hertfordshire wants to sample what’s been dubbed ‘Klinsmania’.

Klinsmann himself takes to the pitch in a No.18 shirt. In the press conference to announce his signing earlier in the week he had been wearing Sheringham’s No.10. Watford go ahead ten minutes before half-time with a goal Klinsmann would have been proud of. Richard Johnson – a young Australian once rejected by Spurs after a trial – smacks one in off the bar from 30 yards.

Midway through the second half Sheringham nets Tottenham’s equaliser. Klinsmann has had a quiet debut; his best chances come in the final ten minutes. First Nicky Barmby plays him through but he drags his shot wide. Then a fine header looks like it is creeping in at the near post but is well saved by Watford keeper Kevin Miller, a £250,000 summer signing from Birmingham. When the final whistle blows Klinsmann is mobbed by Spurs fans as he leaves the pitch.

‘It was like the Gazza days where crowds followed us everywhere because of Gazza, and to a lesser extent Gary Lineker,’ says Howells. ‘With Gareth Bale, a long time after I’d left, you had that too – somebody extraordinary. That’s what we do as a club, produce extraordinary individuals, going back to Ossie and Glenn Hoddle. Martin Chivers was probably my first hero, before that Jimmy Greaves – more recently there’s been Chris Waddle, David Ginola and then Bale.

‘That’s part of being a Spurs fan, seeing players who lift you off your seat and excite you. Hopefully Tottenham will always have that and always be that. It’s about every now and again seeing something you’re not going to see anywhere else.

‘I know we didn’t produce Gareth Bale as such, but we brought him on from what he was at Southampton and turned him into what he has become. With Luka Modric, it was the same sort of thing. I watched him play for Real Madrid recently – just a magical, magical player, and I think Spurs take a lot of credit for what he’s become. It’s just disappointing we can’t hold on to them.’

Tottenham right-back Dean Austin agrees that the size of the crowd for a pre-season friendly at Watford emphasised how big the Klinsmann signing was. ‘It was just a feeling of, Crikey, we’re getting a world-class player here, a World Cup winner. What struck me more than anything was just what a normal, down-to-earth top fella he was. So normal and down-to-earth it was incredible, really. Obviously there was an aura that came with him, but we had a fantastic set of players at that time and there was an incredible spirit as well among the group. There was a core of us who would go on nights out. We did it at the right time, we weren’t going out every night of the week. There was Ian Walker, Stuart Nethercott, me, Darren Anderton, David Howells, Teddy Sheringham, Cask [Darren Caskey], Justin Edinburgh. You know, we had a good group. I think for any player Klinsmann was the perfect role model. How he prepared himself, how he carried himself on a daily basis. No ego, none of this I’ll do what I want, he was just one of the lads. He’s a credit to the profession, really.’

Anderton, though, remembers something about the Watford game which doesn’t quite fit in with that image of Klinsmann as the model professional, although admittedly it’s notable probably because it was his only transgression, and a minor one at that. ‘A funny thing was that before the game Jürgen had half a glass of red wine. He never did it again, but for some reason he did it that day,’ says Anderton. ‘He was relaxed. Obviously he’d been at the World Cup and hadn’t done any sort of proper pre-season. He was clever, using the friendlies as his pre-season, so he wasn’t running around like a madman. He was just easing his way back into it really.’

Tuesday 9 August, 1994

Pre-season Friendly

Shelbourne 0-1 Tottenham Hotspur

Klinsmann 65

Spurs head to Ireland for another friendly. Ilie Dumitrescu can’t play at Tolka Park because he is still awaiting a work permit, so once more all the attention is on Klinsmann, who is partnered up front by Teddy Sheringham.

Darren Anderton starts, but he is stretchered off with two minutes to go with an ankle injury. Nicky Barmby is on the bench and comes on for Jason Dozzell.

Klinsmann scores his first goal in a Tottenham shirt. It comes 20 minutes into the second half and is enough to win the game.

‘From memory, it was in Ireland that we first discussed the idea of Klinsmann doing the dive celebration,’ says Anderton, who fortunately went on to recover from that ankle knock in time for the first game of the season. ‘We were on the coach to the game for the Shelbourne match. I think it was David Kerslake who had the idea. Luckily Klinsmann didn’t do it in Ireland. It would have been wasted in a friendly.

‘The whole pre-season was unbelievable, it was madness. It’s quite funny ’cos the overseas boys can have a different approach to us, but the way Jürgen was, the minute he walked on to the training pitch he was the most humble, nicest guy you could ever meet. You have to think he could have played for anyone in the world. Then again, London’s a pretty good draw for anyone. I’ve been fortunate enough to live there for many years and I love it. It certainly helps clubs get players to come and play for you. It’s still my favourite season as a professional footballer to be part of that. Everybody clicked.’

Klinsmann says: ‘I’d never experienced what I saw in Ireland. Ossie came into the dressing room after the game and handed us £20 or £30 each. He just said, Go out and have a good time. So we all went to the pub. Okay, in Italy sometimes we would go for a club meal after training and maybe have some wine, but this was a different culture. The players took me out to a club and we had a beer late at night. That spirit helped us. It showed we were all the same. I knew that they would be there for me and they knew that I would be there for them.’

Saturday 20 August, 1994

Tottenham will kick off their Premiership campaign away to Sheffield Wednesday this afternoon. All the talk in the football media has been about Spurs and their new striker, so it’s no surprise that one of the main features on this lunchtime’s Football Focus on BBC One is an interview with Klinsmann recorded earlier in the week.

Reporter Clive Tyldesley sits with Klinsmann inside an executive box in the West Stand at White Hart Lane. The pitch on which Klinsmann will become a cult hero is visible behind him. Sporting a blue cardigan with red, yellow and white stripes and a white T-shirt underneath it, Klinsmann smiles from his piercing blue eyes throughout the interview as he explains why he decided to leave Monaco for North London.

The piece starts by showing Klinsmann scoring a goal for Germany against the Netherlands. His team-mate Guido Buchwald beats Aron Winter on the left and whips in a lovely low cross to the edge of the six-yard box, where Klinsmann, who has been lurking behind his marker, surges ahead of him and dispatches a delicious left-foot volley. His celebration – shown in slow motion – involves pogo-ing four times off both feet and circling both arms in a windmill motion as Tyldesley’s script begins: ‘He’s a world champion, a European Footballer of the Year and a proven goalscorer with Inter Milan, Monaco and Germany, one of the world’s great forwards. And now he’s Jürgen Klinsmann of Tottenham Hotspur.’

The piece then cuts to Klinsmann sitting in that box in the West Stand at White Hart Lane, with the old wooden seats of the Paxton Road upper tier behind him over his right shoulder. ‘Five years ago I left Germany, and everybody felt I should stay in Germany because I had everything I needed in Germany,’ says Klinsmann. ‘But I said, No, I have to go to Italy because I need a new experience. And so all the people said, Will he make it? Because you have to change your mentality, you have to learn the language and all that stuff, and I made it in Italy, I made it in France and now I try to give my best in England.’

‘Is this the biggest challenge, though?’ interjects Tyldesley. Klinsmann pauses. ‘Erm … It’s … Yeah, you can compare it to the challenge of Italy in the same way when I went to Inter Milan.’

‘What turns you on about football? What do you want to get out of football most?’ Klinsmann’s face lights up at the question. ‘Oh you know, it’s just to play the game, I mean every time I have a ball around, I enjoy playing a lot. I enjoy every day when I train, every little game that we play, even if you play maybe in a park or somewhere, it’s just the game that pushes me all the time. And I think here in England you can see it all over, all over in London and everywhere, they play, the kids they walk around, they run around in their football shirts and I think that’s the wonderful part.’

To the accompaniment of some music the piece then shows the viewer two of Klinsmann’s goals from USA 94, his arrowed low finish against Belgium, and his flick, pivot and left-foot volley against South Korea, before the music fades out and Tyldesley picks up the voiceover: ‘Five goals during the summer’s World Cup finals confirmed Klinsmann’s standing in the game. Interestingly, he’s a great defender of England’s standing, challenging the view that we’ve slipped into the second division of world football.’

‘I mean the faster a game gets, you know, the more difficult it gets,’ says Klinsmann. ‘And if you play as fast as you play here in England it’s normal that you are making more mistakes in a game, and the more you have space, the more you have time to control the ball, to pass it or to look around. It looks maybe nicer in the first moment, but it’s no big deal when you have the time for it. And here it’s more difficult because everything goes so fast and I enjoy that.’

The piece then treats Tottenham fans to a first teasing glimpse of Klinsmann in a Spurs shirt: 15 seconds or so of action from the Watford friendly as he picks up the ball, sprints forward, bemuses two defenders but